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SIEUR DE MONTS PUBLICATIONS 



VII 



Man and Nature 




ISSUED BY 

THE WILD GARDENS OF ACADIA 
BAR HARBOR, MAINE 




D. of D. 
NOV 30 1917 



SIEUR DE MONTS PUBLICATIONS 



VII 



Man and Nature 

George B. Doke 
A paper tvritten in 1913. when plans now realized for the 
cZtion of a national parh upon Mount Desert Island 
were first brought forward. 

The question of Public Eeservations is of paramount 
i Jpo^tanee in the eastern portion of our country wl>ere 
we have already got a dense population swiftly cieated 
and swiftlv growing denser without apparent hmit. 

Magnificent reservations have been created in the 
West with wise prevision; nothing similar save the re- 
l:t first establishment of -tional forests in the North^ 
ern and the Southern Appalachians, has yet been 
Undertaken in the Bast, with its far greater huraan need, 
Us beautiful scenery, ready accessibility and perma- 

"te'rit^intoTn^w phase of human life where 
ine^I arrconVe/ating in vast multitncles "us^^^^^^^ 
nm-Doses for trade and intercourse; the population oi 
fhe futare must inevitably be many times the popula- 
the t"Jiire m ^^^^ ^^ eonservmg now, 

t;:?,etr isCtpleasant, wholesome Wliin.plac. 

f .. ilnp^P oomma: mnltitudes is great. How gieai, y 

"an wm rfficulty realize in our country yet so newty 

occupied and in a period so new of growth and vast 



industrial change, but what sncli open spaces in the form 
of commons have meant to England in the past, the long- 
struggle to prevent their enclosure by the few shows 
strikingly, and what is lost by tlieir absence in densely 
peopled regions of China, where every rod of ground is 
given u]3 to the material struggle for existence, the ac- 
counts of all returning travellers tell. 

But it is not a question of breathing-spaces and physi- 
cal well-being only ; it goes far beyond that and is deeply 
concerned with the inner life of men. With Nature in 
lier beauty and freedom shut out fi-om so many lives in 
these industrial and city-dwelling times, it is going to 
become — has, indeed, become already — a matter of su- 
preme importance to preserve in their openness, in their 
unspoiled beauty and the charm of their wild life, their 
native trees and j^lants, their birds and animals, the 
places where the wealth or significance of these things 
is greatest, the places where the influence of Nature will 
be felt the most or where the life with which she has 
peopled the world, and man or chance has not destroyed, 
may be enjoyed and studied at its fullest. 

The times are moving fast in the destruction of beau- 
tiful and interesting things. The lost opportunit}^ 
of one year becomes the bitter regret of thinking 
people in a few years more. Valuable and inter- 
esting species of birds, that were still familiar a genera- 
tion since and that might have added to the delight or 
wealth of the world forever, have now become extinct — 
as hopeless of resurrection as if we had known them 
only in fossil forms. Many a landscape and forest-land 
that should have remained forever unspoilt and public 
in the crowded eastern regions of the future has been 
ruined needlessly or locked up in private ownership. 

In nothing is conservation needed more than in saving 
all that is economically possible of the pleasantness and 
freedom of Nature in regions accessible, even by travel, 




Giant tulip trees: North Carolina, on 



the left; Virginia, on the right 



to the vast, town-dwelling populations of the future; in 
preserving- the features of scientific interest or land- 
scape beauty that widen men's horizon or quicken their 
imagination. City parks and playgrounds, valuable and 
necessary as they are, cannot do this, nor can cultivated 
fields and motor-traversed roads. The bold hilltops and 
mountain-heights which the ancient Hebrews felt were 
God-inhabited; the clear springs in Syria over which the 
Greeks built temples through whose ruined stones the 
cr,ystal water still comes gushing; the sacred groves of 
Italy and Druid oaks of Northern Europe, tell a story 
of the deep influence of such things upon the hearts and 
lives of men, an influence we cannot afford to lose today 
in our mechanism-shrunken modern world of immeas- 
urably growing population. 

By taking thought in season, little need be sacrificed 
to secure incalculable benefits in Nature's wilder near-by 
regions, in her grander landscapes that lie within the 
reach of busy men; in refreshing forests, not too lim- 
ited; in picturesque and open downs beside the sea; or 
along the pleasant, wooded side of streams with unpol- 
luted water. When coal becomes exhausted, water-power 
or other form of energy will take its place, but nothing 
will ever compensate for natural beauty permanently 
ruined within the narrowing bounds of modern life. 

Life will always be a compromise between conflicting 
needs, but its needs are not material only. Man's future 
is deeply concerned with recognition of its spiritual side, 
and if there be anything in the world, next to the oppor- 
tunity to gain the necessities of life, to meet disease or 
find the means of education, that should be kept open to 
right use by all, it is the wholesome freedom of Nature 
and oi:)portunity for contact with her l)eauty and many- 
sided interest in appropriate tracts. The day will ulti- 
mately come when to provide such will be felt to be one of 
the most essential duties of the state or greatest privileges 
of wealthy citizens. For wiser and better gifts than 

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these, to be public heritages forever, it were hard to find. 
Permanent as few others can be, they will only gain with 
time, in beauty often and in richness of association 
always. Changes in science or social organization, al- 
tered standards of artistic interest or change in char- 
itable method will not destroy their value. 

There are landscapes and tracts of land which for their 
beauty and exceptional interest — or their close relation 
to important centers — should be inalienably public, for- 
ever free to all. Our metropolitan parks and reserva- 
tions are a first step in this direction, as are the national 
parks out West, but with increasing private ownership 
and rapidly increasing population, the movement is one 
that will need to go far eventually. 

The earth is our common heritage. It is both right and 
needful that it should be kept widely free in the portions 
that the homes of men, industry and agriculture do not 
claim. Personal possession reaches out at widest but a 
little wa}^, and passes quickly in the present day, gath- 
ering about itself little of that greater charm which time 
alone can give. If men of wealth would spend but a 
fraction of what they do for themselves alone, with brief 
result, in making the landscape about them beautiful for 
the benefit of all in permanent and simple ways, the 
result would be to give extraordinary interest — ^of a 
steadily accumulative kind — to every residential section 
of the laud; and it would tend, besides, to give all uu^i 
living in or passing through it a sense of personal pos- 
session in the landsca])e instead of injury at exclusion 
from it, and to give them, too, a freedom of wandering 
and a beauty by the way which do not lie within the reach 
of anyone today. 

And with such gifts would also go the pleasant sense 
of sharing, of j^articipation in a wholesome joy which 
each recurrent year would bring afresh. No monument 
could be a better one to leave behind, no memorial pleas- 
anter- — whether for one's self or others — than gifts like 

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these that make the earth a happier, a more interesting or 
delightful place for other men to live upon. 

That this movement must grow, no one who has thought 
upon the matter can doubt — the movement for public 
parks and open spaces, near or far, not as playgrounds 
simply but as opportunities for Nature in her deep appeal 
and various beauty to remain an influence in human 
life; for places, too, where such features of wild life 
as may coexist with man can be preserved, and where 
plant life, whether in forest growths or the infinite detail 
of flowering plants and lowly forms, may still continue a 
source of health and happiness in man's environment. 

The movement will grow, as all great movements do, 
because a great truth — man's need for Nature ^ — ^ lies 
behind it. The essentially important thing is to save 
now what opportunity we can for its expansion later. 



Our Duty to the Future 

James Bkyce 

Extract from address delivered ivJien ambassador to this 
country, urging the importance of creating national 
parks and forest reservations in the Eastern States 
before the opportunity was lost. 

I have had experience in England in dealing with this 
question, having been for some years chairman of a 
society for preserving commons and open spaces and 
public rights of way, and having also served on the com- 
mittee of another society for securing to the public places 
of national and historic interest. Thus I was led often 
to think of what is our duty to the future, and of the 
benefits which the preservation of places of natural 
beauty may confer on the community. That is a problem 
which presents itself not only in Great Britain but all 
over Europe, and now you in America are tending to 

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Giant Pine-trees m the north 



become what Europe already is. Europe is now a popu- 
lous, and in parts a crowded, continent; you, too, will 
some day be a populous, and ultimately, except in those 
regions which the want of rain condemns to sterility, a 
crowded continent ; and it is well to take thought at once, 
before these days confront you, how you will deal with 
tlie difficulties which have met us in Europe. So that you 
may not find too late that the beauty, the freedom and 
primitive simplicity of nature have been snatched from 
you. 

Of all those pleasures the power to enjoy which has 
been implanted in us, the love of Nature is the very 
simplest and best. It is the most easily accessible; it is 
one which can never be jDerverted ; it is one of which you 
cannot liave too much; and it lasts from youth to age. 
Tlien, too, tliere are the literary associations which clothe 
many a wild or lovely spot witli poetry. The farther a 
people recedes from barbarism, the more refined its 
tastes, the more gentle its manners, the less sordid its 
aims, so much the greater is its susceptibility to every 
form of beauty, so mucli the more do the charms of 
Nature appeal to it. Delight in them is a test of civiliza- 
tion. 

Now, let us remember that the regions and spots cal- 
culated to give enjoyment in the highest form are lim- 
ited, and are being constantly encroached upon. 

Although you have set a wholesome example in creat- 
ing tlie National Parks you have, there are still other 
places where National Parks are wanted. There is a 
splendid region in the Alleghenies, a region of beautiful 
forests, where the tulip trees lift their tall, smooth shafts 
and graceful heads one hundred and fifty feet or more 
into the air, a mountain land on the borders of North 
Carolina and East Tennessee, with romantic river val- 
leys and hills clothed with luxuriant woods, primitive 
forests standing as they stood before the white man 
drove the Indians away, high lawns filled with flowers 

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and traversed by sparkling brooks, containing every- 
thing to delight the heart of the lover of Nature. It would 
be a fine thing to have a tract of three or four hundred 
thousand acres set apart there for the benefit of the 
people of the South and Middle Atlantic States, for whom 
it is a far cry to the Eockies. 

Then there are the Northeastern States with their 
mountains and forests. No other part of Eastern Amer- 
ica can compare with this for the varied charms of a 
wild and romantic nature. And as wealth increases in 
other parts of the country, as the gigantic cities of the 
Eastern States grow still vaster, as population thickens 
in the agricultural and manufacturing parts of Ohio and 
Pennsylvania, of Indiana and Illinois, the love of nature 
and the desire for health-giving recreation will draw 
more and more of the population of those cities and 
states to seek these spots where Nature sliows at her 
loveliest. Do not suffer, therefore, any of the charms 
they offer to be lost by want of foresight now. 

Save your woods, not only because they are one of 
your great natural resources but also because they are 
a source of beauty which once lost can never be recovered. 

Preserve the purity of your streams and lakes, not 
•^^erely for the sake of the angler but also for the sake 
of those who live on the banks, and of those who come 
to seek the freshness and delight of an unspoiled nature 
by the lake or river side. 

Keep open the long ridges that lead up to the rocky 
summits of your mountains ; let no man debar you from 
free access to their tops, or from enjoyment of the broad 
prospects they afford. 

And keep wide woodland spaces open within the reach 
of cities, where those who seek quiet and the sense of 
communing with Nature can go and spend whole days 
enjoying one spot after another where Nature has pro- 
vided her simple joys — mingled shade and sunlight 
falling on the long vistas of the forest, the ripple and 

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miirmiir of a streamlet, the rustling of the leaves, 
and the birds singing among the branches. No better 
service can be rendered to the masses of the people than 
to preserve for their delight wide spaces of fine scenery. 
We are trustees for the future ; we are not here for 
ourselves alone. These gifts were not given to us to be 
used by a single generation, or with the thought of one 
generation only before our minds. We are the heirs of 
those who ha^'e gone before and charged with the duty 
we owe to those who shall come after; and there is no 
duty which seems more clearly incumbent on us than 
handing on to others undiminished opportunities and 
facilities for the enjoyment of some of the best gifts 
that the Creator has bestowed upon his children. 



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